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The Right loves to hate - and imitate - Saul Alinsky

Alinksy’s book was being touted as a way to beat the left at its own game by Dick Armey and James O’Keefe. | AP | AP photo composite by POLITICO

O’Keefe, who had received — and later led — training on using Alinsky’s Rules against the left, said his videos were based on the book, and Horwitt said Alinsky “would have appreciated O’Keefe for his balls and his humor.” But he asserted Alinsky would never have endorsed “pretending you’re someone else in a public place.”

Firebrand talk show host Glenn Beck also has suggested his viewers use Alinsky’s tactics against the Obama administration. And he praised the artist behind the posters depicting Obama as the Joker from Batman over the word ‘socialism’ — which Beck contended utilized Alinsky’s rule declaring ridicule “man's most potent weapon.”

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But Beck is among the most vocal Alinsky conspiracy theorists, calling him a “Marxist” and a “morally bankrupt individual who would use any means to achieve his ends” and suggesting Alinsky’s fingerprints can be found on what Beck describes as an elaborate Obama administration plot to hurtle the U.S. headlong into socialism — a plot that Beck believes includes the administration’s push to overhaul the nation’s health care system.

“While these community organizers appear to be agitating for a seemingly noble goal, or one or another, their underlying mission is — as Alinsky said — how the have-knots can take power from the haves,” Beck said on his Fox News television show last year. “If you know what Saul Alinsky was about, everything — everything that Obama does is going to start to make a little more sense.”

At various times, Beck also has accused the White House of using Alinsky’s tactics against him and fellow conservative talkers Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly, as well as tea party activists, birthers, critics who falsely alleged the health overhaul contained so-called death panels, and AIG executives, among others.

Armey, on the other hand, has a more nuanced view of Alinsky, telling the Financial Times last year: “What I think of Alinsky is that he was very good at what he did but what he did was not good.”

Employees of Armey’s FreedomWorks group have been studying and using Alinsky’s methods — including those in his often overlooked precursor to “Rules,” the 1946 “Reveille for Radicals” — since before he got hot, as an alternative to traditional conservative organizational tactics that focused on influencing elites and intellectuals. And FreedomWorks’ organizers utilized and spread the Alinsky gospel as they traveled the country last year helping newly engaged tea party activists set up their own groups.

“I put together a PowerPoint on grass-roots organizing and the favorite part for a lot of these organizers was how this leftist community organizer Saul Alinsky was so effective and how we can use his tactics against the left,” said FreedomWorks’ top organizer, Brendan Steinhauser.

“You become a better organizer when you understand that there is nothing new under the sun,” Steinhauser said of his appreciation of Alinsky. “All the pitfalls, the problems, the disputes — this is the way human beings are. Politics is a human science and this guy understood that. He was practical. He understood how to get competing factions and interests and individuals to get in the same room and form what he called a ‘peoples’ organization’ and to move in the same direction to take on city hall.”

That’s directly applicable to organizing the tea party movement, Steinhauser said “because we have social conservatives and more libertine libertarians and national security conservatives.” Like Alinsky, Steinhauser said he tries to agitate apathetic or disjointed groups into action, asserting that it was no small feat to “get conservatives to protest and to feel more comfortable using the tactics of the left to achieve our conservative ends.”

It is confusing to me that Politico writes about the right's use of Alinsky tactics while the administration and all its supporters have been following that playbook in the destruction of America as we know it. This is just simply, a strange article.

Lo, destruction of America? I think lying to the American people to get us into a two trillion dollar war was worse for America than bringing affordable health care to the population. I think trying to warp and distort our Constitution in an attempt to create an unregulated fourth branch of government was worse for America than a focus on clean energy. I think abrogating our international agreements and torturing prisoners was worse for America than attacking the problems of our education system. I think letting our financial industry regulators take eight years off work while the financial industry almost wrecked the entire world's economy was way worse for America than focusing our military might on Afghanistan, where the 9/11 terrorists planned their mission. And so on.

The destruction of America years were the Bush years. We're in the healing years now. Just as it took 12 years to pay off the giant debt that Reagan racked up, it's going to take even longer to pay off the debt that Bush Junior stiffed us with. Bush spent more of our children's money on tax cuts for the super-rich than the Democrats will spend on health care for the entire country. For Republicans, it is far more important that our super-rich get our childrens' money than it is for health insurance companies to be stopped from killing our citizens off. Now that those distorted and evil priorities are in the past, life is improving.

There is no mystery here. It's very simple. The right has finally realized that civility and basic decency were being used as weapons against them and it was costing them .

It's just a case on 'No more Mr. Nice Guy. It's time to fight fire with fire'

Here we have Another asanine Vogel article.

Exactly. The article is very telling. all

ARTICLE TRANSLATION: "We Leftists hate it that you guys on the right are finally starting to use some of our own tactics against us".

Thanks for letting us know that you hate it, "Socialists". We'll be sure to dish back out to you plenty more where that came from. We'll pick and choose which Alinsky tactics work best for us. Two can play your game. And of COURSE you don't like Alinsky being deployed against you. You thought this type of "discourse" was perfectly legit. Funny how you cry about it now.

always accuse the right of using tactics that the left uses but never admit that the left has done anything wrong

obama is a socialist and i am not a far right wing nut to say it. i am center right and am only concidered far right wing since the democratic party has moved so far left into socialism

its time we concervatives fight back to save this country from ruination. the alinsky left only attack the individual and never discuss the issues

why anyone thinks the expansion of government will save this country is beyond rediculous

hcr is a perfect example with the government running it more dollars will go to administration and less to care for people[ i think the administrative costs will increase by 40%] meaning less money available to actually treat people but at least the evil insurance companies wont be making that outrageous 3% profit on gross income

Ive seen First Hand a S Side Organizer put a Black Developer in the Hospital because he would not Hire his Thugs. Then there's the President's own partnering w Slum Landlords like Rezko & Allison Davis.

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Not saying I "Hate" Alinsky, but when Dedicating his Book to Lucifer, he might have heeded the Warning : 'The Road to Hell is Paved w Good Intentions'.

The right just loves to hate, period! Are the following people from the right?

Contrary to Senator Barack Obama’s claim that he never heard his pastor Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. preach hatred of America, Obama was in the pews last July 22 when the minister blamed the “white arrogance” of America’s Caucasian majority for the world’s suffering, especially the oppression of blacks.

Didn’t Gwyneth Paltrow have to majorly backtrack after she made a bunch of statements about hating America? Like when she said Americans are stupid and British people talk about art, and stuff like that? Well apparently she can’t help herself which proves that she really does hate America. Now she’s bought a house in Spain and bragging about how much better it is in Spain.

What a POS article. So one line acknowledgment that Clinton (Hillary) and Obama are both disciples of Alinsky and the rest talking about Dick Armey and James O'Keefe? How about a deeper look into how Alinsky's tactics and philosophy are being used by the frickin' President of The United States to drive his agenda?

Why is the media so afraid of Obama and his administration? Morning Joe gets real-time updates and corrections from the White House. The MSM including the networks berate Brett Baier for trying to ask the POTUS some hard questions about healthcare reform, something that affects every person in this country with huge implications. No one seems to worry about the fact that he won't answer the questions. Every article from the AP sounds like a press release from the WH.

If the Right has learned to hate, it does so because the Left is a good teacher. The Right will never match the vitriol and froth that comes from the mouths of Left wing hate mongers. A previous post is correct. The Right has been too respectful for too long. Its time to take off the gloves.

Comrades, comrades, please can we all not just get along? Now go back to work, your taxes are needed elsewhere. If you work hard enough you will be done in time to watch Dancing With the Stars tonight. Great victory for social justice last night, da?

I thought that Politico was a goood web site for politics, but this kind of article is just make me think that I was wrong. This person is not a reporter, not journalist is just a democrat, liberal, therefore please next time just say that you are not objective, that you are a democrat and we know that you are given an opinion that is not fair, you have the right to say what ever you want, I have the same right to tell anything I want, but please be at least honest and describe yourself as a democrat and no as a journalist. Thank you

On August 31, 2008, right after the Democratic National Convention in Colorado, the Boston Globe published a letter from L. David Alinsky boasting about how Barack Obama had made enormously effective use of his training in the methods of David’s late father, the famous Chicago radical, Saul D. Alinsky.

David Alinsky gloated: "I am proud to see that my father's model for organizing is being applied successfully beyond local community organizing to affect the Democratic campaign in 2008. It is a fine tribute to Saul Alinsky as we approach his 100th birthday."

Confirming that Obama was trained in Chicago by the Alinsky apparatus, David Alinsky wrote: "It is an amazingly powerful format, and the method of my late father always works to get the message out and get the supporters on board. When executed meticulously and thoughtfully, it is a powerful strategy for initiating change and making it really happen. Obama learned his lesson well."

Describing how the Democratic National Convention was a "perfectly organized event, Saul Alinsky style," David Alinsky wrote: "All the elements were present: the individual stories told by real people of their situations and hardships, the packed-to-the rafters crowd, the crowd's chanting of key phrases and names, the action on the spot of texting and phoning to show instant support and commitment to jump into the political battle, the rallying selections of music, the setting of the agenda by the power people."

Indeed, the son has reason to boast that his father's organizing techniques were so effectively used by a longshot candidate to climb the path to America's highest office. The most significant part of Barack Obama's education was not at Columbia University or Harvard Law School, but the years he spent being trained in the Saul Alinsky system for community organizing and then practicing what he learned.

Obama was trained by the Alinsky organization called Industrial Areas Foundation (founded by Alinsky in 1940), after which Obama taught workshops on the Alinsky method. Obama learned how to put together a new style presidential campaign that decisively defeated the Clinton machine plus the Republican Party in a dramatic one-two punch never before seen in politics.

Alinsky's organization was based in Chicago, nestled under the protective wing of the Democratic political machine, but his reach extended all over the country from New York to California. Hillary Clinton wrote her Wellesley thesis on Alinsky, who then offered her a job (which she turned down to enroll in Yale Law School).